This is a selection of the fairy tales (in English) written by Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm in the early 19th Century. These stories are fantastical and although aimed squarely at the flexible mind of a child which can assimilate much stranger concepts than an adult they are quite dark and occasionally brutal. The stakes can be quite high as in Rumpelstiltskin where a terrible bargain is made without due regard to possible future consequences and Tom Thumb who seems forever about to be imprisoned or sliced in two...

Elusive Isabel is a novel by Jacques Futrelle (April 9, 1875 – April 15, 1912) first published in 1909. Set in Washington, D.C., it is a spy novel about an international conspiracy of the “Latin” countries against the English-speaking world with the aim to take over world control.

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts,” is one of the quotes from James Allen's classic self help books, As a Man Thinketh. Published in 1902, it provides many more such insightful concepts on the power of thought and its effect on a human being's personality and behavior. This volume is more of a literary essay than a complete book and its title is based on a Biblical proverb, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Taking this piece of ancient wisdom further, James Allen explores the far-reaching effects of the inner workings of a person's mind and motivation...

Written primarily for children, James Baikie’s ‘peep’ at ancient Egypt is a really well done, historical account of the ways of that fascinating land so many years ago. It has stood well the test of time, being both well researched and well written. It’s a fun book for everyone, and families especially will enjoy listening together.

A retelling of old Greek stories involving mythological heroes and their adventures. Tales include those of Prometheus, Io, Perseus and Theseus. (Introduction by Iris McLeod)

Honath the Pursemaker is a heretic. He doesn’t believe the stories in the Book of Laws which claims giants created his tree-dwelling race. He makes his opinion known and is banished with his infidel friends to the floor of the jungle where dangers abound. Perhaps he’ll find some truth down there. – The Thing in the Attic is one of Blish’s Pantropy tales and was first published in the July, 1954 edition of If, Worlds of Science Fiction magazine.

The Trawler is a short story revolving around the trying life of a group of bank fishermen based in Gloucester. Skipper Hugh Glynn worked his men hard; some said too hard, and Arthur Snow was one who had paid the ultimate price.Arthur's close friend Simon Kippen decided he'd ask to take the place of his fallen friend aboard Hugh Glynn's vessel as a dory mate, and from there we have a tale of the open seas between Gloucester and Newfoundland where perhaps only the names and locations have changed from the countless stories of similar nature; the key being that this one, however, is first hand.

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is the most popular of James De Mille’s works. It was serialized posthumously in Harper’s Weekly, and published in book form by Harper and Brothers of New York City in 1888. This satirical romance is the story of Adam More, a British sailor. Shipwrecked in Antarctica, he stumbles upon a tropical lost world of prehistoric animals, plants, and a cult of death-worshipping primitives. He also finds a highly developed human society which has reversed the values of Victorian society...

The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service is a boys adventure story set in WWI – Three College Chums join the military and face the perils of spies, submarines and enemy soldiers in the trenches of embattled Europe. An engaging story set in a period where good guys wore white hats, bad guys wore black hats and every chapter ends with a cliffhanger so you have to come back for more!

The Deerslayer, or The First Warpath (1841) was the last of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales to be written. Its 1740-1745 time period makes it the first installment chronologically and in the lifetime of the hero of the Leatherstocking tales, Natty Bumppo.

The Pioneers: The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale is one of the Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper. The Pioneers was first of these books to be published (1823), but the period of time covered by the book (principally 1793) makes it the fourth chronologically. (The others are The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, and The Prairie.)The story takes place on the rapidly advancing frontier of New York State and features...

The story opens with Ishmael, his family, Ellen and Abiram slowly making their way across the virgin prairies of the Midwest looking for a homestead, just two years after the Louisiana Purchase, and during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They meet the trapper (Natty Bumppo), who has left his home in New York state to find a place where he cannot hear the sound of people cutting down the forests. In the years between his other adventures and this novel, he tells us only that he has walked all the way to the Pacific Ocean and seen all the land between the coasts (a heroic feat, considering Lewis and Clark hadn’t yet completed the same trek).

“No Clue! A Mystery Story” finds detective Jefferson Hastings at the home of wealthy but eccentric Arthur Sloane one hot summer night, when two other guests at Sloanehurst stumble across the body of young Mildred Brace lying dead on the lawn. Sloane’s daughter Lucille asks Hastings to help solve the crime, but Hastings gets surprisingly little help from anybody he interviews, including Mr. Sloane himself and even the mother of the victim. With few clues to aid him and nobody beyond suspicion,...

His family name is derived from a Greek craftsman who created the Labyrinth and designed wings for himself and his son to fly away from the island they were imprisoned in. But Stephen Dedalus, the young hero of James Joyce's first novel, is a young man who rises above his baser instincts and seeks a life devoted to the arts. This quintessential coming of age novel describes the early life of Stephen Dedalus. It is set in Ireland during the nineteenth century which was a time of emerging Irish nationalism and conservative Catholicism...

A Trappist monastery in nineteenth century Kentucky. A young monk. A young woman in distress. Whither? One might want to compare this story with a later story with a similar theme, more fully developed, by the same author.

James Curwood wrote many adventures of the far north. By 1909 he had saved enough money to travel to the Canadian northwest, a trip that provided the inspiration for his wilderness adventure stories. The success of his novels afforded him the opportunity to return to the Yukon and Alaska for several months each year that allowed him to write more than thirty such books. The Canadian North is often referred to as “God’s Country” God’s Country is a tale of adventure, mystery and romance!

Chicago engineer Jack Howland is sent to the edge of the Canadian barren lands north of Prince Albert to establish a train route through some of the most treacherous terrain in North America. He would soon learn that it was not only the terrain that was forbidding, as he begins to understand why the previous engineers sent on the same mission had been forced to give up the task and flee back to the south. Mysterious visitors, suspicious characters, strange apparent coincidences, and one particularly mysterious girl meet Howland at every turn in this suspenseful tale of adventure, excitement, danger, and romance set in the northern Canadian wilderness.

Follow Roderick and his friends Wabi and Mukoki on their adventures in the pristine North. They fight voracious wolves, hostile natives, and the vicious elements of nature, while on the hunt. Getting more than they bargained for, they discover a mysterious cabin, and stumble upon a secret that has lain hidden for half a century. Full of twists and turns, danger and suspense, The Wolf Hunters, the prequal to The Gold Hunters, is an excellent read. (Introduction by Brian Adey)

Action, intrigue, and a touch of romance in the farthest reaches of northern Canada. Sergeant Billy MacVeigh of the Canadian Northwest Mounted, with his only partner Pelliter are the only official representatives in the lonely and desolate reaches of Point Fullerton, hundreds of miles from the next nearest outpost, and from any civilization. Both are nearing the end of their service in those regions, and their main function has been to try to find the elusive murderer Scottie Deane, and if they happen upon anybody trading in Eskimo women to haul them in also...

David Raine is travelling, trying to escape his own memories. On the train he meets Father Rolland, who invites him North, to a world of "mystery and savage glory", to help him find himself again. On the same train, he meets a mysterious woman searching for a man named Michael O'Doone. When she's gone, he finds a thin package on her seat. It contains the photograph of a girl and David makes it his aim to find her, while following Father Rolland into the mysterious North.

Richard of Jamestown by James Otis was written for children with the purpose to show them the daily home life of the Virginia colonists. It is written from the viewpoint of a young boy named Richard Mutton.

Toby Tyler tells the story of a ten year-old orphan who runs away from a foster home to join the traveling circus only to discover his new employer is a cruel taskmaster. The difference between the romance of the circus from the outside and the reality as seen from the inside is graphically depicted. Toby's friend, Mr. Stubbs the chimpanzee, reinforces the consequences of what happens when one follows one's natural instincts rather than one's intellect and conscience, a central theme of the novel.

Ancient living machines that after millennia of stillness suddenly begin to move under their own power, for reasons that remain a mystery to men. Holati Tate discovered them—then disappeared. Trigger Argee was his closest associate—she means to find him. She's brilliant, beautiful, and skilled in every known martial art. She's worth plenty—dead or alive—to more than one faction in this obscure battle. And she's beginning to have a chilling notion that the long-vanished Masters of the Old Galaxy were wise when they exiled the plasmoids to the most distant and isolated world they knew....

The soul of Irish wit is captured in this unique tale of a barstool philosopher, the concluding story from 'Here Are Ladies' by James Stephens. (Introduction by iremonger)

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a book about the life of Catherine Morland and her romantic relationships. The novel is divided into two parts; the first part begins with Catherine’s visit to Bath and her relationship with Henry Tilney and the other people she met there, and the second part starts with the arrival of Frederick Tilney and her visit to Northanger Abbey. This book alongside Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility is considered one of the major works of Jane Austen. The novel had undergone many revisions before its publication and it was even originally titled “Catherine...

Begun when she was just eleven years old, Love and Friendship is one of Jane Austen's stories that very few readers may have encountered before. Austen experts feel that this story was written, like many others, only for the pleasure of her family and friends. It is scribbled across three notebooks, in childish handwriting, and the complete work is thought to have been written over a period of six or seven years. It is dedicated to one of her cousins, whom she was very close to, Eliza de Feuillide...

Before becoming the author of such classics as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, Jane Austen experimented with various writing styles as a teenager in the early 1790s. This is a collection of her juvenilia, including the epistolary novels Love and Freindship, Lesley Castle, and Lady Susan, as well as her comic History of England and some shorter pieces. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)

Strangers at Lisconnel is a sequel to Jane Barlow’s Irish Idylls. The locations and most of the characters are common to both. There is great humor and concomitantly a certain melancholy in most of these stories of the most rural of rural places in Ireland. Although of a higher social class than her characters, Our Jane seems to have a touch of softness in her heart for their utter simplicity, abject poverty and naiveté. From the following brief example of dialogue, can be seen that Ms Barlow could only have come to write these words after having heard them countless times in person: Mrs...

The story of a young mountain girl and her first year of city living and going to a high school. She knows nothing of town life, but she had dreams and longs to learn more and discover what the world is like outside of her mountain home. Go with her to the Westley's home, where she finds everyone kind, except the Wesley's oldest daughter, Isobel, who is proud and snubs her. With determination, and courage she enjoys her first year, and longs to continue at Highacres.

An adventure novel about William Wallace, one of the most popular books ever written by Jane Porter. The French version was even banned by Napoleon, and the book has remained very popular with Scottish children, but is equally enjoyable for adults.